Villains
Jonathan Keeble (reader)
Patience Tomlinson (reader)
This programme is a counterweight to last week's sequence of poems and music about Heroes. In tone it is inevitably somewhat darker, although there are several characters sufficiently complex and ambiguous to have been included in either programme. There are, in fact, several connections between the two, most notably the inclusion in both of Napoleon (a more subtle connection is Liszt, whose Transcendental Studies provided me with both a hero and a villain).
The villains of this programme are a miscellany of the historical, the mythical and the literary. The sequence begins and ends with musical portraits of the Russian historical figure Ivan Mazeppa, a favourite of the Romantics, who in real life may have been far less villainous than in his poetic depiction by Pushkin, Hugo and others. The richest seam of villainy in music is undoubtedly opera, and it was difficult not to turn the programme into a medley of favourite operatic scoundrels; though I resisted this urge, it proved impossible to omit Scarpia, Don Giovanni and Bluebeard, particularly when there were literary connections I could exploit. Some musical choices (the Scriabin) suggested themselves by mood rather than explicit connection with the subject matter; others (for instance the Shostakovich, described by the composer in his memoirs as "a portrait of Stalin, more or less") have a connection which may not be obvious.
In choosing the poetry for this programme I have aimed at a diversity of voice and period - I have included a few works which may well be familiar, such as Browning's superb and dark My Last Duchess, but also several which were, to me, discoveries, like Cavafy's wonderfully sardonic poem Nero's Term. It would be easy to compile a programme on this theme with a rather unremittingly dark tone - so I have included a few rather lighter poems (Stevie Smith's Lord Barenstock, for instance) which I hope leaven the mood somewhat.
Thomas Morris - Producer
Details of music and readings
Timings are from the beginning of the programme
00:00:00
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Overture: Mazeppa
Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra
Neeme Jarvi (conductor)
Deutsche Grammophon 4399062
00:02:25
Oscar Wilde
from The Ballad of Reading Gaol
Reader: Patience Tomlinson
00:03:58
Kurt Weill
Mack The Knife
from The Threepenny Opera
Theo Mackeben's Jazz Band
Bertolt Brecht (singer)
Video Artists International VAIA1193
00:06:41
D.J. Enright
Lucifer Broods
Telling Tales
Oxford University Press, 1997
Reader: Jonathan Keeble
00:07:58
Giacomo Carissimi
Lucifer
Consortium Carissimi
Naxos 85550076
00:13:05
Ernest Bloch
Macbeth - Interlude (Act 1)
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Dalia Atlas Sternberg (conductor)
ASV CDDCA1019
00:19:00
Walter de la Mare
Macbeth
Walter de la Mare: The Collected Poems
Faber, 1979
Reader: Jonathan Keeble
00:20:20
Hans Werner Henze
Royal Winter Music: Second Sonata (III: Mad Lady Macbeth)
Dietmar Kres (guitar)
Wergo WER6012650
00:29:29
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Bluebeard. Let the gentle wife prepare"
Reader: Patience Tomlinson
00:29:45
Bela Bartok
from Bluebeard's Castle: Door 1
London Symphony Orchestra
Walter Berry (Bluebeard)
Christa Ludwig (Judith)
Istvan Kertesz (conductor)
Decca 4141672
00:34:03
Aaron Copland
from Billy the Kid
London Symphony Orchestra
Aaron Copland (conductor)
A Copland Celebration
Sony SM2K89323
00:38:12
Stevie Smith
Lord Barrenstock
Stevie Smith: Collected Poems
Penguin, 1989
Reader: Patience Tomlinson
00:40:07
Giacomo Puccini
"Se la giurata fede" from Tosca, Act II
Philharmonia Orchestra
Samuel Ramey (Scarpia)
Mirella Freni (Tosca)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Giuseppe Sinopoli (conductor)
Deutsche Grammophon 4317752
00:44:28
Robert Browning
My Last Duchess
Reader: Jonathan Keeble
00:47:01
Alban Berg
Suite: Lulu (V: Adagio)
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Arleen Auger (soprano)
Sir Simon Rattle (conductor)
EMI CDC 7498572
00:53:09
Stephen Sondheim
Epiphany, from Sweeney Todd
Michael Cerveris (Sweeney Todd)
Patti LuPone (Mrs Lovett)
Nonesuch 7559799462
00:56:08
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Feelings of a Republican on the Fall of Bonaparte
Reader: Patience Tomlinson
00:57:16
Walter de la Mare
Napoleon
Walter de la Mare: The Collected Poems
Faber, 1979
Reader: Jonathan Keeble
00:57:36
Maddy Prior
Loot
Raven Child
Park PRKCD49
01:00:24
Constantine Cavafy, trans. Rae Dalvin
Nero's Term
The Complete Poems of Cavafy
Harcourt, 1976
Reader: Jonathan Keeble
01:01:22
"Hor che Seneca e morto", from L'incoronazione di Poppea, Act II
City of London Baroque Sinfonia
Della Jones (Nerone)
Mark Tucker (Luciano)
Virgin Classics VM561783
01:08:44
Sylvia Plath
A Lesson in Vengeance
Sylvia Plath: Collected Poems
Faber, 2002
Reader: Patience Tomlinson
01:10:27
Igor Stravinsky
Suite: The Firebird (Infernal dance of Kastchei)
Budapest Festival Orchestra
Ivan Fischer (conductor)
Hungarotron HCD31095
01:14:35
A.E. Housman
XVIII: "Delight it is in youth and May"
from More Poems
Reader: Jonathan Keeble
01:15:10
W.A. Mozart
"La ci darem la mano" from Don Giovanni, Act I
Nicolai Ghiuarov (Don Giovanni)
Christa Ludwig (Donna Elvira)
New Philharmonia Orchestra
Otto Klemperer (conductor)
EMI CDM7690552
01:18:37
Duke Ellington
Don Juan
Duke Ellington (piano)
John Lamb (bass)
Sam Woodyard (drums)
Duke Ellington: The Pianist
Fantasy OJCCD7172
01:21:15
W.H. Auden
Epitaph on a Tyrant
Auden: Selected Poems
Faber, 2002
Reader: Patience Tomlinson
01:21:49
Dylan Thomas
"The hand that signed the paper felled a city"
Dylan Thomas: Collected Poems
Phoenix, 2000
Reader: Jonathan Keeble
01:22:43
Alexander Scriabin
Piano Sonata no 9, "Black Mass"
Vladimir Ashkenazy (piano)
Decca 452 9612
01:30:45
Osip Mandelstam, trans. Clarence Brown and W.S. Merwin
The Stalin Epigram
99 Poems in Translation
Faber, 1994
Reader: Patience Tomlinson
01:31:57
Dmitri Shostakovich
Symphony no 10 (II: Allegro)
The Philadelphia Orchestra
Mariss Jansons (conductor)
EMI CDC5552322
Track 2
Dur: 4'15"
01:36:05
Franz Liszt
Transcendental Studies (IV: Mazeppa)
Freddy Kempf (piano)
BIS CD1210
